The Breaks May Be Off, but it’s unlikely that anyone in the England cricket camp is reading the thoughts of their ebullient off-spinner.  They are having enough difficulty reading the games they are playing against India to get to grips (ho,ho) with Swann’s deadly prose. This may come as a surprise but it should not.

A central text in England’s five Test matches in Australia last winter was their ability, thanks in large part to their Antipodean bowling coach David Saker, to read the wickets of his homeland, and for Flower and Strauss, armed with those interpretations, to select the appropriate strategy for the conditions.

This skill is even more important in one day cricket where the side batting first has to construe and continuously revise judgement on a target score and the tactics to use.

It is the ability to read the situation ball by ball, as one would a thriller sentence by sentence, that marks the good sides from the mediocre. And the larger the array of prose styles tactics that a side has at its disposal the better they will be, especially in limited overs cricket.

So, England’s inability in the ODI series that followed the Tests ‘Down Under’ to read the conditions correctly and their sluggishness in responding to those conditions was a large factor in their failure – a failure masked to a large extent by the euphoria induced by their Test successes.

That weakness is again making itself  legible two matches into their compressed ODI campaign inIndia.

It did not take much talent for lip-reading to infer the scale of Jonathan Trott’s disappointment and frustration when he edged his 37^th ball to Dhoni.  Trott with 34 runs already on the board had looked imperious, threading drives to the boundary over a fast outfield.  He was batting just as Virat Kholi was to do a few hours later when India were making their reply.  And that is high praise, for Kholi batted like a Prince.

Those who bat as Trott and the unselected Bell do (enough said?) dream of being able to express their wonderful talents on such wickets as the one drafted by the groundsman in Delhi, which come rarely even at international level.  They hate it when self-inflicted error closes the book on that pleasure.

Trott knew that he had missed out big time.  It was one of those wickets on which timing comes easily – in stark contrast to that of the first match. Was that it? Were England still scrutinizing the text from the match in Hyderabad rather than this one ?

On this wicket power was not necessary to score effectively.  In fact the use of power induced unnecessary risks.

Cook slashed at his fourth ball from Praveen and was caught in the gully and Kieswetter, when it was already obvious that Vinay Kumar was getting a degree (literally) of away swing, drove with tight hands at a ball just short of a length and was comfortably caught behind to leave England clueless on 0/2.

It was time to adapt and Trott and Pietersen did so.  Pietersen, clipping a straight delivery behind square leg for an early boundary, pointed the way that Kholi was later to explore so successfully. Yet England like power crazed addicts persistently attacked the ball as forcefully as they could (excepting Trott).  Pietersen copied Kieswetter word for word as a look at the scorebook will reveal.

The Indian bowlers kept up the temptation, very rarely straying onto the stumps and when they did so that tightness of grip made their opponents prone to misread the line.

England’s 3,4,5,6,7 cruised into the thirties and forties, yet blind in these conditions to the superiority of timing over power, none reached fifty.

India in contrast only needed four batsmen to overwhelm their foe’s inadequate 237 in 48.2 overs – two of these scoring 112 and 84.

Kholi and Ghambir’s record breaking 209 run third wicket partnership was pure pleasure for them and for cricket lovers everywhere, but it was aided and abetted by England’s failure to learn from the Indian batsmen who flicked with ease anything straight (and almost everything was) to the legside boundary.

How India bat and what they like in the way of bowling is not a tale of mystery and suspense.  How they bowl at England wouldn’t for a minute maintain the attention of a reader of detective fiction.  Both could not be more easy to decipher.

It is off to Mohali and a new page for England to try and read, if that is they can get beyond an airport novel.

ODI 2: England 237 were beaten by India 238/4 

It was just a game of cricket. You know the kind of thing: a few mates getting together and a couple of sides get picked by some settled system.  Maybe everyone standing around while the captains take it in turns to choose.

- I’ll have Chris.

- OK, I’ll have Lasith.

The poorest shepherds with time to spare were doing this five hundred years ago on the breezy uplands of Southern England; kids on the village green do it; workers at lunch time.

Two hundred and fifty years ago England was beginning to undergo an industrial revolution.  The old aristocracy found their land – and they had lots and lots of it – could be used for other things than farming.

Some of the most worthless wastes had fast running streams that could power the new processes driving industry. Some had coal, black gold, scattered across the fields  And there were plenty of trading opportunities secured by a navy that ‘ruled the waves’.

Riches were gained. Others inherited.  Gambling was rife.  Fortunes won and lost on whether the next man through the door would be wearing a hat or not, or on which raindrop would reach the bottom of the window first.

Cricket proved a perfect vehicle for these gamblers.  A bit of fresh air, a lot of fun, the chance to rap your rival on his ankles with a hard ball or watch neighbours barging into each other when one tried to run and other tried to stop him.

So, the ‘Gentry’ or ‘Quality’ as they were known started to form their own teams and put the whole thing on a higher level of organisation.

- My house in the first week of August.

- A bet to make it interesting?

- Sure. How much?

- One point two million dollars?

- A million a man and one for the boss?

- And the loser pays for the fireworks.

- You’re on!

The Royal Challengers Bangalore came to Chennai having chased down a total of over 200 not just once, but twice in a row.  In Chris Gayle, Tillakaratne Dilshan and Virat Kohli they had the in-form batsmen.

But that was in Bangalore and those were the quarter and semi-finals.

This was Chennai and a wicket as slow and stubborn as an arthritic mule. This was the final of the Champions’ League.  This was cricket.

The Mumbai Indians set a paltry target of 139.  For RCB seven an over – little more than a run a ball - would win it.

Yet, as they say, the runs were ‘on the board’.

Pressure makes time accelerate.  It erodes the quality of thought.  RCB set off in a dash like the hair racing the tortoise in old Aesop’s fable and, after four overs, they were going through the formalities at 38/0.

Then, when Harbhajan with little alternative had deployed his principal weapon for a third consecutive over, Dilshan, gambling, played across the line to Malinga. Now another gamble, as Bhaji pressed into the attack himself.

Gayle in deep concentration played all six balls with caution.  But the second delivery had been a wide and with the extra ball the MI captain came around the wicket to the left hander, bowled one that went on with the arm and struck Gayle in front of the stumps.  Goliath fell to the sling-shot.

It was at that moment, with the score on 42/2 and 92 runs required from 78 balls (of which Malinga had only 6 left), that RCB needed to change tactics.  But they could and they did not.

Pressure and fast running consciousness prevented them from knocking the ones and stealing the twos.  They swished and they swiped in vain as if they were still at home in Bangalore. The ball got slower and lower, the target steeper and more distant.

It was any kind of cricket match, it was this special match.

It was the mistake of the least experienced, and made by the most experienced.

It was why cricket continues to entertain, to amuse, to frustrate, to bewilder and to illuminate the human experience.

It was, as it always is, team against team, one against one, you against yourself.

MI 139 all out , beat RCB 108 all out in 19.2 overs in the 2011 Champions’ League T20 final in Chennai, 9^th October.

For Somerset the dream is over.  And so is their long, long season.  The Mumbai Indians proved a step too far in the 2^nd semi-final of the 2011 Champions League T20.

In the end, individual brilliance purchased with millions of dollars – for the game now deals and measures everything in US Greenbacks – won the day.

With the slightly above par score of 160 to defend, the mighty Lasith Malinga,  in his first spell of two overs for the Indians, removed the dangerous pair of Trego for nought and van de Merwe for 10.

Kieswetter and Hildreth sensibly and skilfully reconstructed the innings from these ruins and carefully built a platform from which Somerset could push for victory in the last four overs, but into their deliberate calculations they had always to factor that Malinga would return to bowl two of these.

The Indians’ captain Harbhajan Singh chose to play his ace in the 18^th over at the end of which Somerset, despite scoring only 7 from it, needed an obtainable 22 from 12 balls.

At this point, Harbhajan of the volcanic ego had to still his mind and make the key tactical decision of the match; who should bowl over 19?  He, as captain, and as Super Ego must have felt under enormous pressure to take the responsibility to himself without further thought.

There was also available the hugely experienced Pollard.  But as Baji mentally scanned the bowling figures, he would have seen that Franklin’s figures of 2 overs for 9 runs reached up in supplication like a child’s hand in a class room eager to answer. The decision was taken.

This proved the pivotal point of the match – the moment, as Third Man wrote recently, which only Chaos Theory could fully explain. Franklin’s first ball was full and Buttler smeared it towards cow corner for a two or a four.  By a millimetre and a nanosecond the four was saved by a frantic, sprawling, sliding Pollard.

His second ball was equally inviting and as it traveled towards Buttler, Franklin, Harbhajan, his team, his dugout and thousands of Mumbai Indian supporters will have closed their eyes and seen behind the lids their chances of remaining in the tournament rapidly recede.

Had they looked they would indeed have seen Buttler slap the ball hard back down the track on its way to the straight boundary where it belonged. No fielder could stop it.  But nor could the non-striking Kieswetter get out of its way.  It struck the Somerset opener squarely above the elbow, to make it a dot ball. (One day an Umpire will be killed in a similar incident.  Could a Billy Bowden duck such a return?)

The counter-factual scoreboard stood at 147/3, with 14 to win from 10 balls.  The ‘small difference in initial conditions’ (the minute disparity between a ball missing or hitting Kieswetter) yielded, in the chaotic system which is a cricket match, the widely divergent outcome of  Somerset being required to score 20 from those self same deliveries with their major batsman carrying a deadened top arm.

There was no way back through the gate of time for Somerset – a butterfly had beaten its wing somewhere in the world and this was the consequence in Chennai.

Buttler was bowled the next ball.  The 19^th over went for only 7 runs with Compton steadfastly improvising a four from the last ball. But this still left Somerset to make 14 to win (or 13 to gain a super over play off) from a 20^th over to be bowled by the immense Malinga.

There would be no further widely divergent outcomes from the six balls that remained.  They brought forth only four more runs and entailed two further wickets to leave Somerset 10 runs short – a chasm – and Malinga, with figures of 4 – 20, all clean bowled, the powerful claim to be the best-value player in T20 cricket … bar Gayle or bar none.

Best value?  Yes, for that is now the key measure in this form of the game. The difference between winning and losing this match was $800,000.  The beaten semi-finalists take home $500,000, the runner up $1.3 million, the winner $2.5 million.

That is a lot of ammunition with which to build a team for next year’s domestic T20 competition and the prospect of another campaign in the Champions League 2012.

The Man Ufication of cricket has begun.

Mumbai Indians 160 – 5 beat Somerset 150 for 7 by 10 runs in the 2nd semi-final.

The six foot three inch, colossus, Christopher  Henry Gayle, his club shaved clean of decals bludgeoned the New South Wales Blues attack until they were cudgled senseless with an innings of 92 in 41 balls brimful of 8 vertiginous  6s and 8 effortless fours.

Gayle was joined in knightly fellowship by the more orthodox but no less merciless sidesman, Virat Kholi, who prefers the long sword to Gayle’s mace with which to dispatch an opponent and who duly pierced ten fours and three sixes in a 49 ball innings of 84 not out.

This strike-force  enabled the Royal Challengers Bangalore for a second match in a row to meet the quest to hunt down a score of more than ten runs an over  and to do so with nine balls to spare.

Once again, for NSW, the gauntlet had been thrown down by that other clubman, the diminutive 5ft 7in David Warner who commanded an innings of 123 not out with eleven sixes and six fours battered in only 68 balls.

T20 has developed rapidly, but in the shape of Gayle and Warner this order in the chivalry of cricket has surely found its apogee: tiltyard strength that maximizes the combination of bat-speed and weight, a solid base from which to swing as well timed as a golfer and a mental approach that mimics that of the best baseball hitters.

It also brings a new meaning to ‘club cricket’.

CLT20 Ist Semi Final: NSW Blues 203 – 2 lost to RCB 204 – 4 (18.3 overs)

As untipped as a Senior Serice cigarette, Somerset have upset an apple cart or two by reaching the semi-finals of the 2011 Champions’ League T20 Tournament and they have done so by topping their group and without a single epithet to help them.

Unparallelled, Somerset have shunned the marketing speak that would wish them known as  The Somerset Sabres and now compete as free from artificial additives as a Bulmer’s cider apple.

Second in Group B were the double epithet Royal Challengers Bangalore who, two matches before, had been bottom of the table with zero points.

Group A perhaps more predictably was topped by New South Wales Blues with the Mumbai Indians as runners-up. So NSW will play RCB on the 7^th October and MI will play Somerset on the 8^th.

Young people of today might describe Somerset, with grudging respect, as ‘Random’ by which they seek to express their recognition and approval of that team’s traditional manifestation of their beloved ‘wad ever’.

But even if the result of a cricket match and especially a T20 match is impossible to predict, is it right to say that it is random?

Back in the Nineteen Eighties, the Squire insisted on inviting Benoit Mandlebrot  to guest for him in a match his team was playing in at the small Somerset village of Chewton Mendip.

Mandlebrot’s selection was not without criticism.  He was certainly not the ‘quick’ he had been, but the Squire was positive that his unconventional action would still surprise the unwary and the over-sure.

And so it had proved that morning when a young city dealer Down From Town with his bright red braces and infernal new mobile phone the shape of a Stuart Surridge Jumbo, opening for the visitors, had been comprehensibly yorked, believing in, with blind faith until the moment of his utter ruin, his unquestionable ability to forecast the future.

However, the intellect of Mandlebrot was indisputable and when their own openers went out to bat, he and the Squire took a turn round the boundary to speculate on the regular roughness of life.

“Have you ever marvelled, my dear Mandlebrot,” considered the Squire, “that no cricket field is ever actually a circle?”

“I have been working on this recently, your Grace,” replied the mathematician.  “Neither for that matter are those darkening clouds above us strictly spheres, nor the Mendip Hills perfect cones nor is apple bark smooth, nor for that matter did that flash of lightning over there travel in a straight line.”

“And neither does a cricket match ever take the expected path,” said the Squire, breaking into a trot to regain the Lodge before the heavens opened.

Those with an obsessive interest in the subject will have recognized that these thoughts were later developed in that important work, The Fractal Geometry of Cricket and their meaning made evident in the set of points explored below.

A cricket match is indeed a chaotic system.  Small differences in initial conditions (the hair’s width between a ball missing or hitting the out side of the off-stump) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems such as cricket matches, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.

As the Squire’s librarian and wicket-keeper P. Dia, noted when an early tea was taken, “An arbitrarily small perturbation of the current trajectory (a fine edge to the ‘keeper for instance) may lead to significantly different future behaviour.”

“This happens even though a cricket match is deterministic, by which I mean that its progress is fully determined by its initial conditions, with no random elements involved.^”

And so, wad ever, the deterministic nature of a cricket match does not necessarily make them predictable.

You can be sure that whenever and wherever Somerset play, not for the first time nor the last, the words of Dasher Denning will ring out across Chewton Mendip. “It’s bloody chaos out here.

Third Man is in reflective mood. The weather continues  unseasonable.  Yesterday was warmer than any day in high summer as if September were the new July.

Squares have been put to bed, dressed in the finest loam, but no-one has thought to tell the fast growing grass that the cricket season has ended.  Old Dobbin may be required for one more cut.

The question arises, should all English cricket lovers be turning their attention to the Nokia Champions League T20 and getting in the cool cider and doorstep cheese sandwiches in time to turn on Channel 410 at 2.30 GMT on October 1st to support Somerset when they take on South Australia at Bangalore?

At the MA Chidambaram Stadium, Chepauk, Chennai,  with the luxury of two balls and four wickets to spare, the CSKs chased down the 145 runs set by the Cape Crusaders Cobras.

The Cobras’  total had included a 45 from their number four, the Karachi born Owais Shah, whose major teams Cricinfo  lists as: England,Cape Cobras, Delhi Daredevils, England Lions, Essex, Kochi Tuskers Kerala, Kolkata Knight Riders, Middlesex andWellington.

Third Man is in no position to knock the itinerant life of a modern cricketer earning a crust in the Global Village.  He admits that in the Swinging Sixties he was loaned out to the Somerset hamlet of Shapwick  for their campaign in the Bridgewater Evening League T20.

At the time he also took the field with six others in the Morland’s Sevens, a competition played on the company’s own ground in the pre-festival but no less mystical settlement of Glastonbury.

There were great prizes to be won thanks to the sponsorship of the Town’s leading employer.  These included a then trendy sheepskin coat for longest hit and a pair of carpet slippers for most wickets in an over.

This was of course before super-hero Brian Close (above) brought all that Yorkshire Bitter to the Cider County.

England are set to play the West Indians in two T20 matches at the Duke of Cornwall’s ground at the Kennington Oval.  The first takes place tonight.

This is not the only example of games being played to honour a contract.

Perhaps the earliest such engagement for which evidence survives was contracted between the Squire’s great rival, His Grace the 2nd Duke of Richmond and another of his great rivals, Mr Alan Brodick (shortly afterwards the 2nd Viscount Midleton) and his likeness is well attempted here.

Although a black helicopter was not present when the agreement was struck on the 11^th July 1727, a prototype of the Type I time-machine betrayed the presence of the Squire, acting as an honest broker.

Incidentally, ‘Third Man’ was also there but in his mother’s arms (she was providing the Quality with refreshments) suitably teething on a bail.

The Squire’s personal and annotated copy of the Articles of Agreement can be found in the Great Library with one or two stains and creases that can be accounted for by its use as a distraction for the infant on the unaccountably long journey home.  The prototype lacked the efficiency of later versions.

From memory, the Articles were as follows:

Imprimis: ’Tis by the aforesaid Parties agreed that the first Match shall be played some day or this instant July in the county of Surrey; the Place to be named by Mr Brodrick, the second match to be played in August next and in the County of Sussex, the Place to be named by the Duke of Richmond.

2nd: That the wickets shall be pitched in a fair and even place, at 23 yards from each other.

3rd: A ball caught, cloathed or not cloathed the Striker is out.

4th: When a Ball is caught out, the Stroke counts nothing.

5th: Catching out behind the Wicket allowed.

6th: That ’tis lawful for the Duke of Richmond to choose the Gamesters, who have played in either of his Grace’s two last matches with Sir William Gage; and that ’tis lawful for Mr Brodrick to choose the Gamesters within three miles of Pepperharowe, provided they actually lived there last Lady day.

7th: That 12 Gamesters shall play on each side.

8th: That the Duke of Richmond and Mr Brodrick shall determine the Ball or Balls to be played with.

9th: If any of the Gamesters shall be taken lame or sick after the match is begun, their places may be supplied by any One chose comformably to the Sixth Article, or in Case that not be done, the other side shall be obliged to leave out one of their Gamesters, whomsoever they please.

10th: That each Match shall be for twelve guineas of each Side; between the Duke and Mr Brodrick.

11th: That there shall be one Umpire of each Side; and that if any of the Gamesters shall speak or give their opinion, on any point of the Game, they are to be turned out and voided in the Match. This not to extend to the Duke of Richmond and Mr Brodrick.

12th If any Doubt or Dispute arises on any of the aforementioned articles, or whatever else is not settled therein, it shall be determined by the Duke of Richmond and Mr Brodrick on their Honours; by whom the Umpires are likewise to be determined on any Difference between them.

13th: The Duke of Richmond’s Umpire shall pitch the Wickets when they play inSussex; and Mr Brodrick’s when they play inSurrey; and Each of Them shall be obliged to conform himself strictly to the Agreements strictly contained in the said Article.

14th: The Batt Men for every One they count are to touch the Umpires Stick.

15th: That it shall not be lawfull to fling down the wickets, and that no Player shall be deemed out by any wicket put down, unless with the Ball in Hand.

16th: That both the Matches shall be played upon, and determined by these Articles.

Third Man cannot help but think that these Articles could have been improved with the addition of a clause providing for two super overs in the event of a tie.

The first match was played in July at Brodick’s place, Peper Harow, hard by Godalming and pictured at the head of this post, the second in August at Godalming.

From only a slightly later time, here is a cricket match being played at Moulsey Hurst

Learned readers will already have noted that no Article in the Agreement exists to allocate the broadcasting rights which explains why Third Man is not at liberty to report the results of these matches which must remain a frustrating mystery to time-tied archivists.

Bolton, Oldham, Blackpool, Liverpool, Bury, Earby and Preston these are the towns, mostly old cotton mill towns, where seven of the Lancashire XI which beat Somerset at Taunton yesterday to secure outright the County Championship title for the first time in 77 years, were born, raised and learned their cricket.

One other of the team came through the club’s youth development process from the Under 17s onwards, another was the grandson of Sonny Ramadhi, that adopted Lancastrian, and another was born a mile or two beyond the county boundary.

Only one player was brought in from another county as a fully fledged first team player.

In those 77 years the Red Rose Countyhas come close to winning.

Their home at Old Trafford is a place of great cricketing history – it is where Trumper score a marvellous hundred in front of Cardus, where Laker took nineteen Test wickets in a single match against the Australians, and where Warne bowled ‘that’ ball.

But is also a venue at which a Test match has been abandoned without a ball being bowled, TWICE.  The prevailing weather comes in from across the vast Atlantic Ocean and never misses this its first opportunity to drop its sopping burden.

That is a round-about way of suggesting that Lancashire has had more trouble than most counties in getting enough ‘result matches’ to top the points table.

It is therefore ironic that the club’s plans to redevelop this ground and their misfortune to have been dragged into extremely expensive litigation over these plans have resulted in two radical changes this season.

First, more of its fixtures have been played away from Old Trafford in drier match-finishing coastal climes.  Secondly, the club has been able to afford only a small and more locally derived squad.  At one stage in the year the club’s website could list only 17 contracted players.

This has meant that a fair sized chunk of last year’s Second XI who have been brought on under the intelligent and encouraging coaching of Gary Yates has had to be grafted into first team cricket than would otherwise have been the case.

First Team coach, Peter Moores, has also wisely ensured that coaches throughout the club, including Yates, have spent as much time as possible supporting the 1^st Team so that the home grown talent, intentionally or not, have had familiar and experienced mentors around them.

Moores’ other mantra is that ‘Fittness is not an option”, so his young team looked fresher for instance than rivals Warwickshire who wilted physically as well as mentally at the Rose Bowl.

The way that Lancashire chased 211 in the final innings to win in 29.1 overs showed the resolve and inhibition that comes from a mixture of youth, talent and most importantly from an authentic culture produced from the common experience of learning and playing together in an environment of familiarity and stability.

The figurehead in this Band of Lancastrian Brothers is Glen Chapple who bowled through a wall of pain in true Nelsonian fashion in both Somerset innings and for whom and in whose spirit, it was palpable, the extraordinary deeds of others were done.

In this match Lancashire scored 701 runs for the loss of 12 wickets with everone reaching double figures. The lowest score of a batsman who was dismissed was 20 and the highest was 71.

So, you can win the Championship with local talent, you don’t need ‘hack’ players – they just crowd out the young and get in the way of finding that authentic ‘local’ culture in which your best cricket is played.

It is good to have a great cricketer with you to provide a close examination of the highest class and to provide the young in your opponents with the challenge of facing such class, but, with a captain steeped in the home county’s traditions, such as Chapple and Troughton, a coaching staff that know the psychology of their charges and in whom those charges recognize themselves, all you need is for them to be given their chance.

Horton,Moore, Brown, Procter, Croft, Smith, Cross, Hogg, Kerrigan, Keedy and above all Chapple have proved that.

Context:  Lunchtime of the 4th and final day of the final round of matches in the County Championship Division 1

Warw 493, Hants 324 and 178/3 f.o.: Hants lead Warwickshire by 9 runs with 7 wickets remaining.

Somerset 380 and 282/8, Lancs 480: Somerset lead by 182 runs with 2 wickets remaining.

“Time to get more paint, Third Man!”

It was the Squire’s voice yelling from one end of the Long Gallery.  Incessant rain had obliged him to take his daily practice there; the portraits of his cricketing heroes looking down on him (examples above and below), as, without pause, he began his run up in a fine impersonation of Michael Holding.

The green aero-ball, half covered in sticky tape to make it swing late, reared up as if it had struck an Elizabethan nail head in the oak boards.

Third Man, without flinching, took the blow on the right side of his rib cage.  Hiding the pain, he sauntered down the wicket, head held as high as his time-taut neck would allow, regaining his composure with a spot of gardening.

Jasper, his batting partner, strolled towards him; in his left hand a County bat also prodded down imaginary nails.  Both lefties chewed gum resolutely and, like two spies managing a dead letter drop in St James Park, tried to suggest that nothing untoward was going on between them,

The Squire was back at the end of his long run.  Jasper returned to the bowler’s end.  Third Man stood at the crease as upright as a man of nearly 300 years of age could before another delivery passed his nose, his head jerking backwards as if he’d been electrocuted.

More displacement gardening followed before, in response to the next delivery, his whole body swung round in one reflex action that left him facing fine leg.

Meanwhile the ball continued to rear above the keeper’s grasp before crashing into that epic painting of Decline and Fall at the SCG which adorns the Grand Staircase at the east end of the LG.

“Very satisfactory, both of you,” said the Squire when he had finished with them.  “I particularly liked your Edrich, Jasper.  The details were most convincing.  And Third Man, what can I say, your Close … very close.”

“We shall be seeing young Dennis Brian Close tomorrow TM.  As I said, there’s paint to be got from him.”

It was of course J.M.W. who had mixed the original estate paint for the Squire, (now by his generous licence, available from Windsor and Newton in watercolour tubes as No 649, Turner’s Yellow  ) but he’d taken a great liking to the misunderstood Yorkshireman and paint producer.

His sympathies had been kindled by the story of how, as an eighteen year old and playing for the Players against the Gentlemen, Close on reaching his half-century had been congratulated by the Gentleman wicket keeper Griffith.

Alert to condescension like a heat-seeking missile was to an English Electric Lightning, young Close turned and replied, “Thank you Billy.”

Griffith was so offended by the unwarranted familiarity that he complained to Yorkshire about him.

“Silly middle-class ass,” said the Squire who, from that moment, never let go a chance to champion ‘young Close’.  And from that time ‘til today, the Squire has always bought his paint from Brian Close (Paints) Ltd even if that now entails skidding back to the ‘Sixties once a year in the old Type III.  Not a hardship.

The scene being recreated in the Long Gallery can also be enjoyed here.

Jubiliant young T20 captain Stuart Broad celebrates a wicket

A game of T20- cricket was played on Wednesday at Old Trafford between an Eleven of England and an Eleven of India.  25,000 people attended and enjoyed the fairground atmosphere of forgetful abandon.

This sentence echoes ones from the earliest days of organised cricket when an Eleven of Hambledon might have played an Eleven or more of Slindon, and a similar number of people might have made their way to Broadhalfpenny Down, which Third Man once likened to a mixture of Glastonbury Festival and a car boot sale, to enjoy the stalls, the food, the drink and the betting.

An unintended consequence of Twenty20 cricket has been the rediscovery of the raw ingredients of the game as played a quarter of a millennium ago.

By reducing the resources available to the fielding side whilst maintaining the resources available to the batting Eleven, cricket has rid itself of much of the fear and cultural inhibition that batsmanship has collected in its evolutionary adaptions since those days.

Once, the ball was ‘bowled’ literally along an uneven strip of turf towards a wicket that was formed from two thin stumps placed wide apart, relative to the size of the ball, which might therefore pass through without disturbing the long single bail that bridged them.

The chances of the ball striking those stumps and the batsman being out ‘bowled’ were small.

Bowlers were artful in trying to exploit the terrain to the extent that a pin-ball player may be artful.

Batsmen relied on a good eye, good timing, a good swing and their own power to swipe as far as possible the haphazard missile, hopping and skipping towards their shins like a canon ball on a battle field.

Surely they knew little anxiety above the trepidation of being bested by a social inferior or, worse, by a rival for the charms of some village girl.  Their attitude to the random was as fatalistic as their attitude to illness, poor harvests, gamekeepers and the vagaries of their landlord: “if God wills it”.

On Wednesday night there were a number of debutantes to international T20. The first was Ajinkya Rahane  whose innings typified this rediscovered cricket without fear.  The twenty-three year old gloried in England’s short pitched bowling strategy and its under-resourced leg side field.  As well as hooking with authority, his blade scythed elegantly through anything of length on the off.

At 39/1 in the 5th over he was joined by the debutante Dravid.  Not since 1996 has anyone been able to write that phrase; ‘the debutante Dravid’, but here the veteran was tasting the apple of liberty without the worry of expulsion from Eden.

It took his genius seventeen balls to find its timing and the thought arose that this was one responsibility that should not have been requested of him.  But any concern vanished with the execution of three successive and sublime maxima.

Artful bowling at the death by Jade Dernback, pearls in his ears, recalled David Harris in its innovation, manipulation of speed and practiced skill.  His ‘back of the hand’ deliveries arrived with little to distinguish them from, but two yards later than, his orthodox deliveries that might clock 90 mph.

India, who had earlier been rampant, found themselves restrained to 165.

The third debutante to note was Alex Hales  who took first strike for England, driving the initial in-swinging delivery from Praveen with confidence and missing his second, a straighter one that cut down in his prime for no score.

The fourth debutante and next man as England began the last over requiring 10 to win was Jos Buttler.   Third Man, worn down by time and manifold anxieties, feared for this young man having to come out perhaps with only a ball or two with which to force the issue, and hoped, as indeed it turned out, that his first innings would come another day.

“No,” said a young man of 17 to Third Man when he described his age-worn concern. “He’d have wanted to go out there to prove what he could do even if it were a six needed off the last ball.”

Only Dravid might disagree that T20 is a game suited to the mental freedom familiar to the young.

England won by 6 wickets with 3 balls remaining. 

The Wall stands tall among the ruins

This masonry is wondrous; fates broke it
courtyard pavements were smashed; the work of giants is decaying.
Roofs are fallen, ruinous towers,
the frosty gate with frost on cement is ravaged,
chipped roofs are torn, fallen,
undermined by old age. The grasp of the earth possesses
the mighty builders, perished and fallen,
the hard grasp of earth, until a hundred generations
of people have departed. Often this wall,
lichen-grey and stained with red, experienced one reign after another,
remained standing under storms; the high wide gate has collapsed.
Still the masonry endures in winds cut down …*

An archaeologist at work at the Oval yesterday surveying the third day of the fourth Test match between England and India would have seen a single wall, upright and unscathed by anything that time had thrown or bowled at it, evidence of the considerable skill and craftsmanship of a great civilization.  About the base of the wall he would have noticed fallen columns, single capping stones, dismantled steps, smashed arches and overturned cornices littering the ground; evidence of the destruction wielded against that civilization by some invading storm of vandals.   This was not another find of the remnants of the Indian bowling, but the relics of the once great cultural expression of cricket which was Indian batting whose lyric verse no cricket lover can have ever tired of enjoying.

Rain took nearly four hours of time out of the day’s play but this forced England to declare at 591 for 6.  Bell had reached his first ‘double’ in Test cricket before perishing to the sweep against Raina for 235 (in 487 minutes and 364 balls).  Morgan had damaged his Test match reputation a little further and Bopara had done all that was required of him in personally testing circumstances.  India sheltered in their dressing room throughout the delay in play, either recovering from the pummelling they had received in the field or in dread of the pummelling they were about to receive when batting, or both.

England in contrast manifested their testosterone when going through their full pre-match preparations on the drying outfield.  Once again the Indian batting line up had to be altered as Gambhir recovered from a concussion acquired when thumping the back of his head very hard as he stumbled backwards in a failed attempt at a catch the day before.  This necessitated Dravid opening once more, but it should not necessarily have necessitated VVS Laxman batting at number three again, but inexplicably it did.

Sehwag taking first strike untypically watched a couple of deliveries from Anderson go down the off-side before hitting the next two to the boundary in a more typical Sehwagian fashion.  All hearts were raised by the hope of witnessing this special batsman lead India’s counter attack against the Vandal horde, but Anderson was setting him up for the one that comes back and he was duly trapped LBW like a novice.  Laxman was accordingly sacrificed like some gambit with a pawn.  Who exactly is responsible for squandering the potential of this great middle order batsman against the new ball?

Tendulkar arrived to another standing ovation as the crowd, keen to the history of events, willed him to the rather artificial milestone (or millstone) of a hundred international hundreds.   This giant of all-time was all-care and all-attention but he was twice struck ducking under balls that were not that short, once on the helmet and once in the ribs.   It was an uncharacteristic awkwardness and discomfit, but he met the blow to his head with an embarrassed smile and then a perfect on-drive for four.  All might be well, thought the historically minded crowd.  But an all-or-nothing sweep him off his length approach to Swann, who came on to bowl salivating like one of Pavlov’s dogs, was fraught with danger.  He must have calculated that the risk was worth it.  It revealed the Indian estimation of the wicket and the threat that the off-spinner presents, but the odds were always against it answering the destructive challenge of Swann the Terrible, and it was not long before Sachin bent his knee again and gloved the ball over his head to a waiting slip.

All who slaver are not fools.  Raina’s humiliation continued with a 40 minute duck that showed him confounded by movement and then lured by flight to over-balance and be stumped by a quick handed Prior, the batsman’s toe finding only a precarious perch on the line.  England took 5 Indian wickets in two hours (including a nightwatchman). Fifteen therefore remain to be demolished and reduced to rubble by England in two days. Swann’s figures are 10 overs, three maidens, 3 for 27.

The Wall remains 57, the only lasting evidence of a shattered civilization.

* extract from “The Ruin“, an 8th-century Old English poem from the Exeter Book by an unknown author.

N.B. The Squire has been called to Town and Third Man’s valeting services are required.  His Grace has not revealed whether this journey is in response to a call from the Governor of the Bank of England, a secretive someone in Downing Street or Duncan Fletcher, but further morning reports of deeds at the Oval will not be forth coming.

After his team's batsmen put up a massive total, Graeme Swann has taken it upon himself to carve through the Indian batting line-up

It was to be a fascinating contest; the World Champions against some upstarts with the potential to overwhelm weaker opposition, but not yet tested against the best.  Surely England were still a couple of series from being the real thing?  Yesterday, in the fourth encounter this summer between England and India, and after a first day’s play circumcised by rain, the home side’s openers were removed in a blink of still waking eye to full length deliveries.  However, the next two batsmen like supermodels parading down the Oval catwalk in a record breaking partnership totaling 350 made it another long uphill day for India.

This Oval wicket is without its characteristic pace but possesses the character of a crumbly cheese already offering enough turn to discourage any side from volunteering to nibble it last.  Shortly before close of play Pietersen was back in the changing room for 175 from 232 balls.  Bell is still strutting his stuff on 181 from 304 balls.  Test centurions Morgan, Bopara, Prior and Broad have yet to step forward.

Frankly, in the field, India are not fit to play Test cricket – that is not fit physically or mentally.   On this historic ground that has provided a stage for great cricketing deeds since the 1840s, India’s aging batsmen are a liability. The younger ones, perhaps emulating their elders, have absented themselves from effort and struggle.  Catches are being dropped and, worse still, catches are being jibbed.  The derision of the crowd was not without justification.  There will be better (and much fitter) bowlers operating in club cricket this afternoon.  There will be far better fielding sides.

Sharma (1/81 in 27), the best on offer, is five or six miles an hour off the pace that he should be able to operate at and, significantly, the movement is all one way – that is, ‘in’ to the right handers who are at liberty to step across and play him freely to the on side.  It is all corridor, and no uncertainty.  Sreesanth (1/95 in 23) is also ‘off the pace’ and, with a ball and conditions that during this entire series have consistently helped the swing bowler, his movement begins from the hand and ends in the middle of the bat.  In truth, ECB will have provided India with better net bowlers for morning practice than the out-of-condition RP Singh (0/96 in 30) who Bell and Pietersen milked with the care of ethical farmers practicing sustainable agriculture.  Mishra (o/129 in 29) looked as menacing as a particularly somnambulant sloth, his variations offering no alarm, his turn serving monotonous defence rather than attack.

As Bell and Pietersen treated the crowd to an exhibition of batting, it was difficult for spectators not to snooze and dream they were watching May and Cowdrey against Ramadhin and Valentine.  Bell modelling the high elbow of haute couture, Pietersen fashioning his revolutionary ‘New Look’ before their eyes; just as W.G. Grace had paraded his radicalism in an innings of 224 not out on his debut here in 1866, and just as John Small a century before that at Broadhalfpenny Down for Hambledon against Kent had broken new ground with a straight bat and innovative technique to tame the new length bowling in a huge innings of 140 runs.  Then, awakening from such revelry, the spectator remembered the quality of the opposition. Pietersen is still providing a window on the future, but this was nowhere as important an innings as the one he played here against the Australians in 2005.

Declaring the innings at 591/6, England set India a mountain to climb.  Then the great batsmen of India had one last chance to shine and Swann the opportunity to play his part in a series that is, like a Christmas dinner, fast demonstrating that too much can be as debilitating as too little.  As things stand now, Swann is running the show, having just dismissed Sachin Tendulkar for his third scalp.  India are in for another humiliation by the looks of it.

England 591/6 dec, India 103/5

It’s been climbed before, but not by this route.

England are World Champions of Test Cricket, having reached the summit via a double assault of the Green/Yellow Band, an airy and exposed crossing of the Protean Ridge, an enforced bivouac on the gale-swept Pakistan Col, a careful, though comparatively straightforward crossing of the Sri Lankan Ice Field and finally the discovery of a route that ‘would go’ up the rock face known as the Indian Steps.

The summit was obtained at 3.15 BST Saturday 12^th August 2011, the technical climbing of the final crux having fallen to the intrepid James Anderson brought up on the smooth holds and deep recesses of his native Pennine gritstone.

England have reached the top. But the expedition does not end here!

However, Expedition Leader, Andrew Strauss, was quick to acknowledged by a hastily erected satellite phone that it had been a team effort, citing especially the logistical support masterminded by Andy Flower and his Base Camp team.

“We were never short of what we needed at any stage of the climb,” he maintained.

Technique, power, stamina, teamwork, courage and a GSOH have all been in abundance to make their ascent of this peak possible.

Now the summit team are in the ‘Death Zone’.  Their ambition is to remain there for the foreseeable future, but the objectives ahead are not to be underestimated.

Winter climbing turns the Pakistan Col, the Sri Lankan Ice Field and the Indian Steps into a nightmare of crevasses, ice towers and unexpected avalanches all demanding very different techniques to those used this summer.

“We go on from here,” said the modest Strauss.

Asked why he did it, he replied, “Because it is there.”

Was it the British politician, Enoch Powell, who said that every political career ends in tragedy?

Yesterday Alastair Cook set the record for the highest score made at Edgbaston, beating the score reached in a very wonderful and technically innovating innings by Peter May in 1957.

Yet, when Cook went to bed last might he nursed a mental wound.  When he wakes this morning the wound will begin to mend but the scars will remain with him for the rest of his life.

Every innings ends nihilistically, contaminated by regret.  Every innings leaves a scar.

Cook’s will be a deep and lasting reminder, the legacy of remorse as permanent as a tattoo.  He fell short of the triple hundred by 6 agonizing runs.

His was the innings of a scaffolder, carefully setting out the base and erecting the first row of vertical supports on Wednesday evening. A row of horizontals were carefully placed next morning, always in partnership, always alone.

Every batsman deceives himself, but in reality he is  always a hangman erecting his own gallows.

Ravi Bopara might have been in on the second day of the match when Morgan was twice dropped, first by Sreesanth at backward point and then by Dravid.  But instead he had to wait through a night and then through much of the third day.  Add to these fretting hours the couple of years he has had to wait for reselection and an idea may form of the nerves and expectations that he carried to the wicket when his chance eventually came.

As he took guard he will have known that there was no chance, at 596/4, for glory only psychological disfigurement.  It is a cruel, cruel game, this cricket.

He had watched as balls spun from Mishra and Raina across the bats of the two left handers and so he not unwisely played for turn.  The ball rotated rapidly towards him, bounced, but for some inexplicable reason failed to grip, kept on at him and struck his pad in front of the wicket – the victim of unpredictable natural variation.

It is most likely that Trott will return for the next Test, it is likely that Bopara has played his last Test.  He will carry the scar for the rest of his life.

There have been something like 15 King Pairs in Test cricket history.  (That is, a first ball dismissal in both innings by the same batsman.)  The membership list is dominated by bowlers and there may have been a run out or two in the forms of dismissal.  Batsmen of the quality of Sehwag do not willingly apply.

Many watching yesterday will have carried a felling throughout the day that Cook would fall short of 300 and that Bopara would meet ill-fortune.  Just as many would have predicted a King Pair for Virender Sehwag .

It was one of those days.

Sehwag did not disoblige the god of cricket the sacrifice. Having waited over sixty hours to avoid this fate, thirteen of them in the field, he attempted to drive at a ball from Anderson more than a fraction too short and curving exponentially away from him like a life-raft sweeping away from a man drowning in that unbridgeable river of life.

Sehwag is a member of the exclusive 300 hundred club that had, minutes before, excluded Cook, now he was a member of the equally exclusive King Pair Club.  In fact as a member of both he is in a club of his own -  which distinction he will be reminded of (and remind himself of ) every day for the rest of his life thanks to the angry red scar blemishing his mind.

Later, Swann and Pietersen turned the ball sharply, they will have dreamt of scars inflicted like duelists of old.  The combat may be ritualistic in cricket but the wounds, though mental, are real and last longer than the physical.

India 224 and 35/1, England 710/7 dec 

In truth, there are so many Test Matches that they tend to blur into one another, even for the ‘tragics’ who wish to write about it.  Obsessive note taking and a young and alert brain are required which, for someone like Third Man, nearing his 300^th birthday, and with a thousand Test matches located somewhere in a crowded and disordered mind, it is too much to hope for.

In the Test played yesterday, one side are 456 for 3, giving them a lead over their opponents of 232, but if you were the gentleman photographed above, when you woke from your cricket-induced revelry and read these facts from the scoreboard, would you have been able to tell where you happened to be, which match in the series you were watching, what day of the match it was, and, even, which day of the week it was?

If you glanced at the newspaper being read by the person sitting in front of you and saw it was Thursday, your confusion would double.  Test matches for most of his life began on Thursdays.

So far, 700 runs have been scored for the loss of 13 wickets.  Not even in the Golden Age was such action likely in a single day.  If it were the 1960’s this stage in a match would have been reached on day four.  Cricket was not played on a Sunday, so he could be forgiven for thinking it was Monday.  No?

No, it is the Thursday of this match and all these runs have been amassed in two days.  If this were 2004, then,India would be batting and sailing along at 453 for 3.  No?

No, it is England who are already 232 runs ahead of a despairing side about to lose their World Champion status to, of all sides, England – yes England - and it is day two of the match.

So, where exactly are we?

The ground is quite unrecognizable as £36 million pounds has been spent here on a new stand.  £36 million.  It looks a little like the Gabba, but it is the wrong time of year for a Test ‘Down Under’.

With a score like that it could be Lord’s 2011.  Why is that?   Because England thrashed India at Lord’s in 2011.  It could be Headingley in the same year. And why is that?  Because England thrashed India at Headingley in that year too.  It could be the Oval in 2011 ?  Again, why?  Because England look set to thrash this Indian side there too.

No, it’s Edgbaston.  Does that matter? Same result.

England are superior in every area of the game – batting, bowling, keeping, fielding, captaincy, tactics, management, support and, most importantly in cricketing culture.

Does that matter? Ah, ha … another cause for confusion.

True, Dravid, when untypically dropping his second chance of the day, threw down his precious national cap in abject frustration with his own performance in a way that every one who has ever played cricket and dropped a dolly can empathized with.

But Sehwag, moments before, had walked off the pitch leaving his team mates to ‘it’ – that is to the formalities of another ‘unconditional surrender’.  His retreat from the situation spoke more eloquently than an unfurled white flag.

To paraphrase an Australian captain responding to Body-Line in 1932/33, “There are 10 sides in the ICC ‘top rank’ but only three of them are trying to play Test cricket.”

The other seven are either too weak or unable to gain a following for Test cricket or more concerned with the income generating shorter forms of the game.

It is no exaggeration to say that every single member of theI ndian side is a dollar millionaire, in many cases, many, many times over.

This is also the case with some Englandplayers, but to be celebrated in England the player must excel in Test cricket. This is not the case in India or the West Indies.  For a young West Indian or New Zealander, the IPL or The Big Bash now provide the dreams and incentives.

Bopara, yet to bat, turned his back on fame and fortune in the IPL to increase his chances of selection for the England Test team.  His ambition has been rewarded by circumstances.  He deserves much credit.  Lovers of Test cricket will hope he scores a hundred today.

There are great Test cricketers, in the Indian side and those self-same cricket lover also want them to score a stack of runs in their second innings, whenever that begins, which could be Saturday at this rate.

But the 2010 Duke balls being used in this series are swinging, there is life fin this wicket for the three tall England seamers (as there was at Headingley), and the ball is beginning to turn considerably and a little more quickly as the part-time off-spinner, Raina, is demonstrating.

In England, the political class are facing the consequences of a dismantled social fabric and wandering from television studio to television studio protesting that, “Something must be done.”  They may not have a solution but their behaviour at least demonstrates their concern.

Similarly, this series between England and India needs to be a wake-up call.

And not just to Indian cricketers, administrators and supporters, but to everyone committed to cricket in its highest expression.

It is not clear, however, that anyone leading the sport is bothered even to admit, “Something must be done.”

India 224, England 456/3

Once upon a time Birmingham was a chocolate city.  A couple of miles south of Edgbaston, where the third Test between England and India began yesterday, is the model village of Bourneville.  It’s a model village not in the sense of a miniature village built to scale, but in the sense of an ideal village built to a concept.

In the case of Bourneville it was the idea of the Quaker and chocolate making Cadbury family that made its fortunate by adopting the receipt of Sir Hans Sloane for drinking chocolate milk and later producing the first milk chocolate bars in England to rival those made on the Continent.

As an ideal village, readers would not be surprised to find that Bourneville had a model cricket ground, constructed also in the ideal sense, and played on twice by Worcestershire and later from time to time by Warwickshire IIs.

Today Bourneville is also the site of Cadbury’s World, ‘where chocolate comes to life’ and where visitors have the chance to live the life of a Charlie in a Chocolate Factory.

The India cricketers probably wish that they had spent the day at Bourneville and enjoyed a ‘fun chocolate day trip’.

Instead the side that at Lord’s and Headingley had been dunked as thoroughly as the Etruscans crossing the Tiber turned up at Edgbaston to find the same river continuing to flow fast and furiously before them with no idea how it could be crossed.

They lost the toss, were compelled by England to cross the torrent first, were dismissed for 224 and, then, watched helplessly as the their opponents crossed the stream as if it were a babbling brook, scoring 80 without a single loss on what appeared a benign surface.

Yes, it was England who, as well as winning the toss, looked to have won Willy Wonker’s Golden Ticket.

Good batsman are seldom bowled, but yesterday Gambhir, Dravid and the lost soul Raina were subject to this dismissal.

Sehwag, the usually extravagant, returning from surgery, but batting ‘like a patient etherised upon a table’, endeavoured groggily to drop his hands under the steeply rising first ball he received and ‘gloved’ to the keeper.

Tendulka, who is finding August as cruel as July, was wasted by Broad after scoring just one run in his brief innings of eight balls.

At 111 for 7, Dhoni and Kumar, like ‘Dry Salvages’, launched a counter attack.  (After the day’s play the Indian captain confessed, “I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable.”)

But you cannot bridge a river or win a Test match from 117 for 7.

A lucky catch by Cook ‘under the lid’ at silly point brought the innings to a close with the dismissal of Sharma but otherwise every wicket was either bowled or caught off the edge.

Third Man asked back in December whether 80 is the new 90 . The England attack is faster than that of India which seems as soft as a Cadbury’s Chocolate Eclair, but the trio of Anderson, Broad and Bresnan each averaged 83 mph during their combined 58.2 overs.

It is the ideal speed and England have built their attack around this concept.  Allied to precise seam position, it maximizes the opportunity for the ball to move late in the air and off the wicket.

Cook and Strauss, who reached fifty shortly before the close of play, batted as if they were enjoying a net before their real innings would begin on day two.  That maybe so, provided rain does not spoil things.

This was therefore an ideal day for England, continuing their domination of an India lacking spirit and renewing the World Champion’s acquaintance with the implacable god of cricket.

A large mug of hot chocolate made to Sir Hans Sloane’s formula may be just the ticket, however it is more likely that India will not escape the wrath of the river god until the team is on the plane home.

The BCI would do well to heed Elliot’s warning in the third Quartet that the river once bridged …

The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. 

Cricket is a game of bat and ball and therefore, if a side is to lose, it must be beaten twice-over.  This is cricket’s erudite expression of the adage, ‘It ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings.’

During the course of the third day of the second Test between England and India, the Indian bowlers were well and truly beaten.

England began what for them should have been an anxious day 43 runs behind India with one wicket down and an important batsman, Trott, hors de combat.

But they ended it having scored 417 runs for the loss of only 5 wickets with a total of 441 for 6 – giving them a startling and commanding lead of 374 with more to come.

After Strauss had been unhorsed with the lost ground yet to be retaken, Bell first and Pietersen later made a mockery of the perceived difficulties of the batting conditions.

There followed a day of carnage and mayhem.

As soon as India had unseated one opponent his replacement picked up the fallen lance and took forward the advance with yet more zeal and vigour.

In England’s list the pugnacious Swann comes into the tilt-yard at 10 and the belligerent Broad, who transformed England’s fortunes in their first innings, has yet to bat.

It is the interminable belligerence of the batting, with its ricochet of the West Indians and the Australians in their pomp, that will have done so much psychological injury to India.

Theirs was a weakened bowling attack.  Not only is Khan missing, but Singh was unable to bowl more than 9 half-hearted overs at a stage in the match when a physically and mentally robust spinner should have bowled 30 or 40.

Yet, the dismissal of Trott caught off the gloves from a steeply rising delivery from Kumar that was a repeat of one earlier in the day which bounced over the gloves of Dhoni standing up to the same bowler, is evidence that the spite has not been rolled and baked out of this wicket entirely.

However, the day will be remembered for an incident that occurred from the final delivery before tea when Morgan hit the ball to the midwicket boundary and, owing to a mixture of the confusion caused unintentionally by the boundary fielder, Kumar, and the tiredness and sudden break in concentration on the part of Bell (137 at the time), the batsman left his ground for the sanctuary of tea, believing the ball to have gone for four and thus to be ‘dead’.

Kumar unsure whether the ball had reached the ‘ropes’ returned the ball in leisurely fashion, via the wicket keeper, to short leg who calmly removed the bails and appealed.

Bell was given out amid the taunts and jeers of an unattractive crowd whose belligerence easily matched that of England’s batting.

Foot soldiers will say that the valid appeal should have stood.  The cavalry will say that Bell’s error was a misunderstanding and therefore, in the spirit in which cricket is played, the appeal should have been withdrawn.

Following a visit to the Indian dressing room by Strauss and Flower, Dhoni, with the support of his side, chivalrously withdrew the appeal and Bell resumed his assault on the Indian bowling after an interval extended by this diplomacy.

Whether this incident adversely affected the performance of India in the final session or whether it was plain exhaustion, England plundered 187 runs after tea with Prior hacking 64 in 55 balls and Bresnan 47 in 66.

Rahul Dravid, acting as spokesperson for Team India, had evidently been reading The Waning of the Middle Ages in which Johan Huizinga identifies the source of the chivalrous idea to be ‘pride aspiring to beauty, and formalized pride giving rise to a conception of honour, which is the pole of noble life’, told reporters, “It is nice to play the game in the right spirit.”

But chivalry is also a social mechanism for the avoidance of blood-and-treasure-sapping feuds, and the maintenance of dignity amongst a self-preserving elite.

Without questioning the upright motives of India’s senior players, who clearly felt a deep unease at the nature of Bell’s dismissal, the decision was made against the background hubub of a crowd making naked its aggressive intent and the buzz of half the commentariat who were already challenging the honour of this tourney’s visiting combatants.

After his innings of 159, Bell can place his lineage without presumption beside that of Tendulka, Dravid and Laxman in the Peerage – a high rank indeed.

The prospect is dark for India, but these esteemed knights and their fellows will tell themselves that in cricket the batsmen must be beaten too.

It is possible to comprehend a game of cricket in terms of resource management.

The 101^st Test encounter between England and India reached the half way stage in terms of wickets available to each side shortly after five o’clock on day two of five possible days – that is, in a touch under two-fifths of the available time.

Cricketers talk about a game being ‘in a hurry’.  This game is in the type of hurry that the hare was in when, wakened from a deep slumber beneath a shady tree by an intruding sense of unease, it spied the tortoise up-ahead a human foot from the finish line, and sped off flustered and unsteady, disorientated by the unfamiliar condition of the pursuing rather than the pursued.

The batsmen in this Test have been similarly disorientated and taken into unfamiliar territory by the nature of the Trent Bridge wicket that they are playing on and the characteristics of the liquid (air) through which the ball is travelling.

Help was at hand thanks to the presence in the ground of Professor Julius Sumner Miller.  (Third Man, on calmer reflection, may have been deceived by some fiendish impersonator in fancy dress.)

“Why is it so?” the batsmen could have asked the good Professor when the ball swung late or did not do so, or when the ball reared with the force of a Harrier jet taking off from aircraft carrier in a heavy sea or did so next delivery with the feebleness of a Tiger Moth.

With what passion Sumner Miller could have demonstrated in either dressing room the principle of Bernoulli with its commonsense-defying effects of pressure and temperature on liquids!

“My view is this,” the Professor might have explained to those Project Managers, Flower and Fletcher, “We teach nothing. We do not teach cricket nor do we teach cricketers. What is the same thing: No one is taught anything! Here lies the folly of this business. We try to teach somebody nothing. This is a sorry endeavour for no one can be taught a thing.  What we do, if we are successful, is to stir interest in the matter at hand, awaken enthusiasm for it, arouse a curiosity, kindle a feeling, fire up the imagination.”

Professional batsmen rarely show their emotions.  They discover early in their career the value of inscrutability.  They show no pain when hit.  They communicate no admiration when beaten by the bowler’s guile.

However, in this match we have seen more expressions of shock and awe from the batsmen than in a whole career, such has been the volatility produced by the extraordinary playing conditions.

Stuart Broad took six wickets for 46 in 24.1 overs.  He even took a hattrick, a rare enough event in Test cricket.  Yet long after his feat has been forgotten, the memory of VVS Laxman and Raul Dravid batting in these conditions in the morning session will remain etched on the memory.

93 runs they put on, most of them in boundaries.  Dravid, taming the willful ball as he shepherded it through an imaginary gap in that hurdled fence made by the slips and gully, went on to make 117.

Laxman, driving square through the covers with a languid bat or picking up the ball with the apparent effortlessness of a boy scrumping an apple in an orchard and tossing it over the wall made by midwicket for his friends to enjoy, will have been disappointed to edge a loosener from Bresnen to Prior for 54.

Interviewed after the end of the day’s play, when England remained 43 runs behind India’s first innings total of 288, with 9 of their available resource of wickets remaining, Dravid explained, “What we do, if we are successful, is to stir interest in the matter at hand, awaken enthusiasm for it, arouse a curiosity, kindle a feeling, fire up the imagination.”

So, it had been Sumner Miller.

It is therefore with awakened enthusiasm, curiosity and imagination that the resumption of play is awaited.  Resource Management be damned.